“I have facts. They have opinions.”
That’s how Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent answered me when I asked him why he seems to have such an easy time dismantling the arguments of establishment media reporters. I shared with him my theory that he is able to calmly embarrass anti-Trump journos because he honed his skills debating Yale students while he was a professor. He didn’t reject my suggestion (he had nothing but kind words for his students), instead offering the aforementioned response.
He has facts, and they have opinions.
It’s quite simple, when you put it that way.
WATCH the full interview:
And through the first year of the Trump administration, Bessent, the avatar of MAGAnomics has certainly had the facts. He stood up to seemingly everyone in the elite consensus (aside from President Trump himself and the writers of the Breitbart Business Digest) and said that not only can we win trade wars with zero new inflation, but countries will be begging us to cut new deals.
My colleague John Carney and I got his thoughts on this and more than a dozen other topics in a 45-minute sit-down interview in the historic “Cash Room” at the Treasury Department adjacent to the White House.
The full interview is today’s episode of The Alex Marlow Show podcast with additional exclusive commentary in today’s Breitbart Business Digest.
The conversation began with a brief tour of Bessent’s past, where his anti-establishment mindset enabled him to conquer Wall Street (he’s worth more than half-a-billion dollars). “I’ve made money betting against elite consensus,” he said.
He told us that he specifically modeled his investment career on people who are not only contrarians, but are willing to change their minds. This was quite refreshing in what feels like an increasingly tribal political moment.
“Policy is personnel. And when I saw what President Trump was doing, one of my biggest single trading game days was the 2016 victory,” he said.
He also identified that Donald Trump was going to become president, twice.
“I thought I would be a good match to be President Trump’s Treasury Secretary,” he told us, “or just to be part of his administration.”
“So, I went to him,” he continued, “almost three years ago now, and said, ‘Sir, I think you’re going to win. I think it’s going to be transformational, and I would like to be part of the economics team.’”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, left, speaks with Breitbart’s Alex Marlow, center, and John Carney in Washington, DC, on November 21, 2025. (Matthew Perdie/Breitbart News)
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sits for an interview with Breitbart’s Alex Marlow and John Carney on November 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Matthew Perdie/Breitbart News)
But Bessent was becoming MAGA many years earlier.
He described attending a Hillary Clinton fundraiser ahead of the 2016 election because he “wanted to go and sit in the room and hear what they had to say. And I walked out of that meeting, and I said, they’re going to lose.”
“That was the best research money I ever spent,” he added.
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only person he shaded during the event. I asked him to contrast himself with Jeffrey Epstein collaborator and arch-Democrat establishmentarian Larry Summers, to which Bessent said, “You always got to look and see what Larry’s motives are and who’s paying him,” noting that Summers has a “fascination with one of the biggest Chinese propagandists in the world.”
Summers was the president of Harvard, the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, and director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama. He also sought seduction advice from Epstein after the convicted sex offender was busted for child sex trafficking.
Larry Summers, president emeritus and professor at Harvard University, speaks at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2025. (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In the second half of the interview, we focused on policy and strategy. Bessent detailed how the Trump administration applies maximum pressure to win trade negotiations and how rival nations routinely thank them for the new deal terms. Naturally, he heaped praise on President Trump’s dealmaking acumen.
The conversation then turned to inflation. The Treasury Secretary walked through “the three ‘i’s that are eviscerating working Americans”: immigration, interest rates, and inflation. He shared that he believed inflation will come down substantially in 2026 and teased a forthcoming study from the Council of Economic Advisers that shows that inflation in red states is 50 or 60 basis points lower than blue states.
A deep discussion of rare earths followed, during which Bessent described the administration’s goal of “de-risking” from China, as opposed to “decoupling.” He touted the fact that rare earth magnets are being made in the United States for the first time in 25 years and that this new industry is likely to generate thousands of new jobs.
But that’s not the only industry where China’s hold on our supply chain gives him concern.
“We got a problem with pharmaceuticals. We got a problem with semiconductors, steel, ship building. Those are strategic,” he said. “We don’t need to decouple from China. We just have to de-risk. And no one was willing to de risk because it’s hard. It’s not easy, but President Trump has told the pharmaceutical companies, you’re bringing the production here.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, the Secretary describes how the national security aspects of his job are amongst the most time-consuming. He also offered advice for Zohran Mamdani (even though “he knows everything”) and explained how the Trump administration views deregulation as the centerpiece of their economic agenda.
The interview ended on a positive note, with some kind words from the Treasury Secretary: “Congratulations. You both get A’s for your early analysis.”
The full interview is available now on The Alex Marlow Show feed on YouTube, Apple, Rumble, and Spotify.
Look for more clips and analysis at Breitbart.com and in the Breitbart Business Digest.
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